[RELEASED] Clone-Ridden Fields

[theschap]

It's an itch io!

Clone-Ridden Fields!!!

 

Lot's of stuff didn't make it, but it's mostly functional at this point.

 

Hello Wiz Jammers!

 

This is my second Wizard Jam, and coincidentally my second game jam! My first game is The Three Antidotes.

 

For this jam I wanted to do something a bit more focused, and not as system and content heavy as an action platformer.

 

The idea behind Clone-Ridden Fields is that you are in an Elysian Field farming simulator. You walk around the field searching for souls to aid in the harvest of the field. The souls(clones) will chop up the wheat field, and you will need to gather it to complete the game. The aesthetic is very grim, high contrast, and low resolution, while the actual field will be pleasant and comforting. Think Diablo/Diablo II.

 

As far as mechanics go, the player must TEAR the wheat from the ground, sacrificing the yield, to search for a clone to help them out. The more clones, the faster the field can be harvested, but you don't want to sacrifice too much of the yield. You then must gather the yield. The game will be scored based on amount of yield and time it took to harvest. If time permits I would like to create some type of leaderboard, local... maybe global? <- I have no idea how difficult that is but GAME JAM!

 

Things I want to focus on/learn:

• A* pathfinding
• 3D pipeline for unity (models, materials, animation)
• Unity particles
• Leaderboard?
• Aesthetic, I really want to focus on the style of this game, and I want to push the production values as much as I can. @JoelWmusic has already provided a fantastic track to set the tone of the world. I plan to put it up here once I get the art style more established so STAY TUNED!

 

 

[Rilen]

Whoo-hoo! Love the final name!

[theschap]

I posted this in slack already, but I wanted to put it in here to show some progress, and keep things together.

 

Here is my current 8-way path-finding on square grid tiles. I wanted to get this working early, and now that it is I'm going to focus on the aesthetic for a while.

 

 

Now that it works on the player, I'm hoping it will be pretty straightforward to implement for the AI. The only difference being the AI needs to find the nearest tile to be harvested, and then walk over to it.

 

[theschap]

I have my skeleton model finished. I am now working on UVs and textures!

 

[Synnah]

That is a very good skeleton! Good luck UV-mapping it! It looks super-fiddly.

[theschap]

Thanks @Synnah! I have recently finished up the UVs, and rigged it up, and have a basic idle animation and walk animation started. I'll post some updates this evening.

 

I haven't worked much with 3D in Unity3D yet, but it has been a very satisfying process so far.

[theschap]

I haven't gotten around to texturing this thing yet, as I've been getting distracted by animation. Last night I did the idle, walk, and summoning animations. Left to do are chopping, and picking up. Maybe a walk with carry animation as well.

 

There's are a couple hitches in there, but that's just a product of the 15 fps gif recording.

[Rilen]

Oh wow! I looked away for a couple of days and you have made such a wonderful skelliman! I love how slow and sad they seem! 

[theschap]

Spent some time on art, and getting some actual objects into the game (in various levels of completion).

 

Behold! Clone-Ridden Fields of Grey!

[Mythalore]

This is shaping up really well!

[Travis]

That all looks really good. That skeleton climbing out of the ground!!

[theschap]

Thanks for the the kind words!

 

I have so much more art I want to put in there, and there are some annoying bugs I couldn't quite track down, but it's now available to play!

[********]

Watching my skeleton friends chop that wheat in combination with the soundtrack was a very calming and reassuring experience for me.  I could just watch them go all day.

 

Also very stylish scythes.

[Ben X]

Very nicely put together. This has the makings of a cool clicker game - get different types of souls going, etc.

[theschap]

On 12/5/2016 at 9:30 AM, kickstandcarp said:

Also very stylish scythes.

 

You saying that makes me wonder if I should fix it or not. Right now the coloring is a result of the material not exporting correctly.

 

On 12/6/2016 at 3:32 AM, Ben X said:

Very nicely put together. This has the makings of a cool clicker game - get different types of souls going, etc.

Thank you. That's an interesting idea.

[atte]

6 hours ago, theschap said:

You saying that makes me wonder if I should fix it or not. Right now the coloring is a result of the material not exporting correctly.

 

I was wondering about the scythes. I'd like to see them fixed to make the visuals more cohesive - I like how the whole scene with these harvesting skeletons feels like this strange, haunting medieval painting come to life. Great, very fitting music too, reminded me of the gorgeus 'To Zanarkand' from FFX.

 

One small thing: When a round ends there is just the 'play again' option, it's not hard for the player to exit the game otherwise of course, but I feel like a 'quit'/'back to start' button is missing there.

[hedgefield]

Dang atte, you put into words the same feeling I had when looking at this game. That sort of weird fever-dream-like vision of the skeleton in the wheat field. It's very good.

[JoelWmusic]

@atte Thanks for the comparison.  High praise.  Nobuo is my hero

[theschap]

@atte Thank you for the feedback. I have since fixed the weird material glitch. I also think it makes sense to have a 'Quit/Back to Start' button. I'll definitely put that in there.

 

@hedgefield Thank you!

 

I have been neglecting the forums, but I have fixed, and added a number of things over the past couple weeks.

 

Changes since submission:

• More art!
• Leaderboards: Try to topple the Idle Thumbs hosts!
• You must now pick up the wheat that is harvested by your skeleton clones!
• Clone harvesting is a bit more stable, and actual wheat harvested is now accurate.
• You can no longer summon spam

Right now the leaderboard are populated with 10 Idle Thumbs network hosts. Instead of incorporating a name input field, I just created a random name for you at the end of the round, and update the leaderboard.

[Nappi]

Nice execution! There is an interesting atmosphere in this game.

 

A tiny nitpick: You should consider having a leading zero in the second counter. 1:3 looks weird.

 

(I also liked the Dot Gobbler cameo)

[theschap]

On 12/19/2016 at 9:47 AM, Nappi said:

Nice execution! There is an interesting atmosphere in this game.

 

A tiny nitpick: You should consider having a leading zero in the second counter. 1:3 looks weird.

 

(I also liked the Dot Gobbler cameo)

 

Thank you! That's a good point on the timer. I'll add it to my list.

[theschap]

I recently patched in the UI improvements mentioned by @atte and @Nappi.

 

I also put in some particles because I thought it would be fun.

 

Next, I think I'm going to do some sfx and maybe make all of them with my mouth. We will see.

[theschap]

I have indeed added sound effects created using my mouth, and some Audacity magic.

 

There is also a Mac build out there for those Apple people who are interested.

[theschap]

There was some discussion and interest in slack earlier today around rendering 3D assets in more of a pixelated style. Fairly early in development I played around a bit with some pixel rendering techniques using shaders. The screenshots below are rendered using 16 colors. Basically the shaders will clamp the colors being rendered to a color of your choosing. Looking at this again, I feel like if I would have spent a little more time with it, and maybe expanded it to 32 colors I could get something that looks pretty cool.